


After It All

by missazrael



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, spoilers if you haven't read the manga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 17:52:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1478722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missazrael/pseuds/missazrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taken from a prompt on the kink meme.  Stop reading here if you don't want spoilers from the manga.</p>
<p>
  <i>After they get word that Mike has died, his closest friends (Erwin, Levi, and Hanji) have to go to sort out his possessions before notifying his family. They go in to clear out his room, and find something that just really has Mike written all over it, something that reinforces that these are his belongings they are cataloging and that he is really gone.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	After It All

The Survey Corps isn’t wasteful. When one of their own falls, anything and everything they leave behind is up for grabs. It’s a tradition the Military Police and the Garrison don’t understand, that they _can’t_ understand—how can a group that is so wasteful with its member’s lives be so frugal and conservative with the flotsam and detritus they leave behind? They don’t understand how losing someone, and having one small piece of their life to hold on to, to remember, is sometimes all that keeps the Survey Corps going. 

When you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss starts to gaze back, and when you start to forget your friend’s names and faces because too many of them have crossed over before you… well, there’s a reason Captain Levi collects wings from cloaks and why Commander Erwin carries around a little book with the names of every soldier who’s died under his command in a pocket close to his heart. If you don’t remember, you might be the next one forgotten.

It’s been two weeks. Two weeks since the Survey Corps came back, two weeks since the Armored and Colossal Titans revealed themselves, two weeks since the 104th shattered around itself into little fragments. Hange would normally be delighted over having her theory about the titan shifters proved right, but it’s also been two weeks that Mike hasn’t come home. Two weeks since anyone has seen Mike’s horse. 

The Survey Corps will wait, but the Survey Corps is also cruel. Three days beyond the walls is considered plausible; a full week is unlikely; at ten days, paperwork is prepared for the inevitable. After two weeks, the notation beside the name in Erwin’s paperwork goes from _MIA_ to _D_. Deceased. Lost in action, no body recovered.

Mike is gone.

But the Survey Corps is not wasteful, and it falls on those that knew him the best to clean out his quarters and distribute his possessions. It is a job that they once would have done with Nanaba, but she didn’t come back either, and so it’s a lone, quiet trio that enters Mike’s quarters, let in by a key from around Erwin’s neck. Levi, limping but determined, his jaw clenched and his eyes harder and more distant than usual. Erwin, white-faced and slow-moving, his right sleeve fluttering where an arm had once been. And herself, Hange, her burns from the Colossal Titan starting to heal and flake away, revealing rough, angry pink skin underneath.

Mike didn’t have much; soldiers tended to not leave very much behind, being unburdened by the ebbs and flows of typical human existence. Mike’s family was all gone, there were no grieving relatives to get in their way, and for that, Hange was glad. The Survey Corps had been his family; it was only right that they be the ones to sort through his life.

Levi wandered to the bathroom, wordlessly taking the messiest part of the quarters. Erwin sank onto the bed, allowing himself weakness in front of them and only them, and started going through the nightstand, his remaining hand clumsy and ill-suited for the task. Hange took the closet.

She should have gone into the bathroom with Levi.

Mike’s clothes were hanging neatly, orderly, just waiting for him to come back and fill them, and what would they ever do with clothes this big? No one else in the Corps came close to Mike’s size, except Erwin, and he already had a full wardrobe to tailor, to take up. Perhaps they might have fit Reiner Braun, except he was gone too, off over the walls and running past Wall Maria, and he wasn’t worthy of getting Mike’s gear anyway. No one was worthy of it. She sorted through it all, her fingers numb as they shifted against clothing soft with wear and age, clothing with faded, weathered colors, its dyes slowly seeped away by age and sweat. 

The last thing in the closet was his spare Survey Corps cloak. She pulled it off the hanger, holding it in both hands to fold it—the cloaks, at least, weren’t very size specific, they’d surely get another recruit who could fit into it someday—when she caught a faint whiff of Mike’s scent. She froze, her hands tightening on the cloak, a scarce-healed burn on the back of her hand ripping open and weeping colorless fluid, and breathed in through her nose. Yes. Yes, there it was, the smell of _him_ … forest and sweat and horses and sunshine and that unique musk that was his and his alone, and Hange buried her face in the cloak, breathing in and surrounding herself with him, surrounding herself with his smell and his essence, and for a moment it’s like he’s standing there behind her, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“Hange?” But no, it’s not Mike, Mike is gone, lost to the titans, dead or dying somewhere alone and unmourned, and oh god, she hopes he wasn’t afraid in his last moments. She turned, clutching the cloak to her chest like the talisman it has become, and hid her face and her tears in Erwin’s chest. He wrapped his arm around her, murmured soft, nonsense syllables into her ear, trying to be comforting, but she can’t stop. She can’t stop crying, because it was never supposed to be Mike, he was never supposed to leave them behind. Over the sound of her sobs, she heard rustling, and someone pulled the cloak out of her hands. She reached out, trying to get it back, but then something soft draped over her shoulders, and Erwin helped pull Mike’s cloak tight around her.

“You keep that.” Levi, his tone bored and flat, as always. “God knows no one else will want it.”

She nodded, her face still against Erwin’s chest, and pulled up the hood on the cloak. Someday, it would lose this smell; it would become like any other Survey Corps cloak, just green fabric and white and blue wings. Someday, someone would go through her things, sorting and organizing them and preparing to distribute them out, and she could only hope, selfishly, that it would be Erwin or Levi, and that they would know that the enormous, faded cloak, without any hint of musk left to it, would be the one to wrap around her body and burn.


End file.
